Topics

"You will be our president when you read this note," George Herbert Walker Bush wrote to Bill Clinton, the man who defeated him in the 1992 campaign, denying Mr. Bush the provisional vindication that reelection provides until history has its chance to judge from a distance. Nonetheless, in Oval Office tradition, Mr. Bush left a note for Mr. Clinton to read on taking office, and it echoed the message of transitions past, even between bitter political rivals: "I am rooting hard for you." Note the pronoun: You will be our president. My president. In our interviews and research into the private relations among these most public men, the pronouns matter. At a time when...

Related "U.S. Presidential Transition (2009)" Articles

"You will be our president when you read this note," George Herbert Walker Bush wrote to Bill Clinton, the man who defeated him in the 1992 campaign, denying Mr. Bush the provisional vindication that reelection provides until history has its...

Presidential second terms have a bad name. The traditional view is that presidents are stuck with first-term leftovers on their plates and a calendar that calls on them to get any legislation through Congress in the first 18 to 24 months. After that,...

The Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, including one donation that violated its ethics agreement with the Obama administration, foundation...

The White House faced mounting political complications as a second top fundraiser for President Obama was linked to a federal loan guarantee program that backed a now-bankrupt Silicon Valley solar energy company, and as two California lawmakers called for...